Weekly Update bonus episode: NNO, Election Season

!!!!There’s actually an election Tuesday!!!!

It has not been getting nearly enough attention, but if you haven’t voted, get on it! Voting rates in this off-year election are not great. Part of the reason is that, although there are four seats for our City Council, none have a primary. (There have to be three candidates on any ballot to appear in the primary and the top two advance to November.)

But there is one very consequential race for us and that is King County Council District #5 – replacing long time Des Moines resident Dave Upthegrove.

I know and respect several of the candidates. However, I am asking you to consider Peter Kwon – currently on the SeaTac City Council. Again, this is not the final election. But I’d like to see Peter be one of the two who advances to November for a few reasons — probably not in his campaign materials.

• First, he’s the only person who doorbells anywhere near hard as I have – which means he knows Des Moines far better than the other candidates. (See him in the very back row of this picture?) Not that the other candidates won’t learn, but King County is larger than most US states! By itself, District #5 is, massive – if it were its own city it would still be one of the largest in the US. District #5 includes the much larger cities of Renton and Kent. We depend on King County for a ton of grants and airport issues, and I do not want Des Moines to get overlooked.
• Speaking of which, and this is a bit sad, Peter has also been the only local elected other than moi with any track record on airport issues.
• He has also done, hands down, some of the best work on arts funding — something I really want to promote more of here.

Tuesday is National Night Out!

Every year the Council gets a fairly long list of neighbourhoods doing NNO events. But every year, we get it closer and closer to the day. I want to try to say ‘hi!’ but ya can’t be everywhere. Every year I try to mix it up. If your neighbourhood is new to NNO or has some things you’d like to talk about? Please send me an email, give me a call, shoot me a text, flaming arrow, and I’ll make your street my priority. 🙂 (206) 878-0578.